A contact sport is a sport that includes significant physical contact between players participating in the sport. Some of the popular contact sports include rugby football, American football, ice hockey, lacrosse, amateur wrestling, and the like. American football, generally known as football in the United States and Canada, is a competitive team sport that involves both physical toughness of the players involved and a complex level of strategy between the players. Derived from the English game of rugby, American football was started in 1879. Since then, American football has become a multi-billion dollar business in its professional form.
Football is played between two teams of players, wherein the object of each team is to advance a ball into opposing team's area. The team which is advancing the ball may be referred to as an “offensive team” and the team which is preventing the advancement of the ball into their area may be referred to as “defensive team”. To prevent the offensive team from advancing the ball, the defensive team may tackle a ball-carrying player of the offensive team by knocking the player to ground or out of bounds of the field of play. Accordingly, players of defensive team may use some technique of physical contact to knock the ball-carrying player of the offensive team to the ground. The game of football is both physically and intellectually demanding, and requires the players to possess excellent athletic skills, physical strength, and quick thinking.
Football players of the offensive team and the defensive team are involved in various playing techniques, such as tackling, blocking and drilling. These playing techniques require different training strategies and different movement pattern of the football players. For developing and improving athletic skills, physical strength and playing techniques of the football players, their coaches generally employ conventional football training devices and systems. The conventional football training devices are adapted to simulate conditions of an actual football game for enabling the football players to practice their techniques without requiring them to encounter real football players. A blocking sled is one of the conventional football training devices used for training football players to practice various playing techniques, such as blocking. A conventional blocking sled preferably includes a dummy attached to supports, such as crossbeams for enabling the football players to practice blocking techniques. However, the dummy of the blocking sled is generally stationary in the nature or capable of being moved in one direction only.
Most conventional football training devices, such as the aforementioned devices, do not simulate movement patterns of real football players for training the football players.
Further, the coaches of the football players may be required to accurately evaluate the athletic skills, physical strength and playing techniques of their players. In such instance, the conventional football training devices are not adapted to provide an accurate assessment of the athletic skills, the physical strength and the playing techniques of the players. Accordingly, the coaches are generally unable to strategize training sessions for the players to locate and up bring the shortcomings in the techniques of their players.
Based on the foregoing, there exists a need for a training apparatus that is capable of simulating actual game conditions for training players. More specifically, there persists a need for a training apparatus which is adapted to simulate various movement patterns of real players involved in a sport activity, such as football. Further, there exists a need for a training system that is capable of measuring and analyzing athletic skills, physical strength and playing techniques of the players in an easy and reliable manner.